Of Mohito, Lasagne and Drunken Dolphin

It was one off regular weekends that we used to wait for! Got up late in the morning as usual and gave a huge twist before being out of the bed. Aditya gave a scream, ‘Ibrahim Lao!!’ (bring fast!).
Well, we all thought, is this a time for the things to start?

Then he says – ‘Ibrahim bring my shorts’ – then he calls Biswanath in quick succession and says – ‘well, we are going to beach today, bring the car immediately’ – the loyal driver parks the car right in front of our mess in no time. We all jumped in, four of us – all in beach dress except Gundiah - the only guy dressed in full sleeves and a trouser. On being asked why are you in such an incompatible dress? He promptly said with wit, - ‘Hey, this is no chum setting worth my salt; tell me who’s going to date me tonight?’ Breaking silence he speaks again. -‘None I suppose! The dress code thus rightly suits the state of my poignant mind’.

We all felt he is going to be a big dampener but then he turned out to be one of the greatest entertainers of the tour in the end.

The car picked up the speed once it was there on the highway, here we go – there were lovely scenic beauties with both the side of the asphaltic road lined up with bright green trees merging together in the form of an arch intermittently at places with the real refreshing gush of winds added to the real flavour of an express long drive.

But then the guys were morose and the mood was not just peaking up in spite of the fact that we were all heading to one of our favourite destination! At that moment, we spotted a wine shop out of the many in series in Goa. We stopped the car and all of us took a Bacardi Breezer each - in one gulp or two. And can’t believe that swung the mood of the crowd to such an elation that we were bursting into large laughs for silly humours as well.

‘Biswanath’ a proficient pilot of his favourite Scorpio owned by his master, he steered from the highway on to the gullies of the Goa’n village and till the time he stopped the car, we were all engrossed in lively conversations mostly involving ‘Rose Mary Simpson’ whom we met at the same spot the last time around. Quite amazingly, she had a Platinum pin pierced on to her lower lips! She was simply a dazzling British girl in her early twenties, lofty with height close to six feet, athletic built, longish hair with natural silky streaks, masterly crafted slashed black eyes, sharp nose with complementary temple, unblemished glowing skins and an astoundingly thriving beeline! Her million pound smile was almost unforgettable.

Well, mind you, she got very friendly with my mate Sandy Belch – an Aussie - more than once and what conversations!! She is actually a student of Marine Biology at the University of Plymouth about 200 miles west of London. She studies by making her earning by being a stewardess in the evening pubs of Plymouth and depends largely on the tips from the generous clientele for her luxurious living.

Oh! We all arrived at the Palolem beach, the sight was really exotic with sandy semi white gentle shore curves with ‘out of the ordinary’ picturesque Palm trees and a mixture of hills and seashore at the both ends of the beach. The beach is an encircled type with the two ends closing in the form of a semi circle, water front is bulgy with a very easily lost horizon in sight. If you constantly gaze at the waves, the feeling of earth roundness evolves. Most of all, it was the season time, so it was eye candies in plenty. Once you close your eyes and reopen you might as well mistakenly think for a moment that you are right there at the Barbados Crane beach.

This south Goa chill out destination being a less frequented and relatively much cleaner seaside, it is thus immensely popular among the foreign tourists and some are even found to spend almost half of the year here. The beach is awesome and was of very fine white sand of the quartzite attribute found in a land of lateritic origin! Some areas of the beach were awfully flat sometimes even for a distance close to 400 metres, you can't drown yourself there! The water was crystal clear and it was a real retreat to have drenched yourself with that tasteful salty water and the lovely moderate waves of around one and a half man measure for most of the time, here you can choose to jump when the wave arrives and get excitement galore.

Gundiah forgot to carry his swimsuit as a rule and was on a Jockey brief and went on repeating the Jockey ad sentence all the time and made nothing but fun of himself at the eyes of the swim suit clad gals, who could not but resist laughing in delight while swimming in the incredible sea of colossal experience. Gundiah did not seem to pay heed to all that and was immensely enjoying himself forgetting about the rest of the World.

After a first round of bizarre experience with the sea, we all were rather pretty hungry and thus got into the convenient restaurant called ‘Dropadi’ – an impressive shack but an sensitively exotic place where you can wine and dine with any cocktails and dishes out of Italian, Caribbean, Taiwanese, Japanese, English, American and Indian recipes etc.

Aditya sat in one corner of the table like a commanding officer and out of his usual habit yelled ‘Ibrahim Lao’ only to realise in a split second that we are not in our sweet senior bachelor mess calling a rare breed of most efficient but enormously sensitive to individual moods at the same time - ‘Cook Ibrahim’ but sitting in a eatery of transnational cuisine. ‘Shantanu, please order – you know the best, you are saying somethin’ like Fellafel’ murmured Aditya. I said ‘Surender come here, take our order, the Steward lazily walked past many tables occupied by his distinguished guests and while coming kept on giving twisted stares all over the place and finally arrived with a ever smiling face. ‘Yes Sir, What can I serve you today?’ I said, ‘Yeah Get us a portion of a Lasange, Chicken-Prawn Spraghetti on white sauce, mozzarella cheese and tomato top up, and and and get all of us Mohito each. The guys got stunned when I called names and tacitly believed that I am of course a regular here.

Gundiah got very upset at the name of the cocktail and he had so many ‘out of bound ideas’ to replace the name of Mohito to po..marito etc., I pleaded with Gundiah, 'please don’t say anything, there are lot many Italians here, they will feel shy!!!'

You know the drink I seem to be relishing to the blissful extent and the cocktail is made of Light White Rum, Oh! No! Let me share with you the recipe sequentially. Take a traditional cocktail glass, pack it with full of ice, pour 30 ml of Peter Morgan Rum, dash it with Angostura Bitters, put a few half crushed mint leaves, top it up with lime juice and club soda and add one tea spoon of sugar and mount a lemon slice with an olive by the Umbrella as Garnish, add stirrer and a straw - to conclude it for the romantic value it deserves.

I mostly savour the drink with Lasagne an Italian dish of mozzarella cheese, cream, spinach, beef or chicken with olive oil as the base and a lot of tomatoes. After a few drinks we started to order music of our choice and Aditya said ‘Vijay play Nirvana.’ While we were engrossed in music parleys two Israeli girls whacked into our conversations and added’ Yeah Yeah, the beats are great and guys did you all notice the interlude with the saxophone ….so sweet for the ears… candid voice……. The work on the piano!!! How come you guys like favourite songs of mine as well?? Then the gals all of sudden offered to clap Aditya and he reciprocated by clapping each other in high arm action. It seemed like West Indians are celebrating the fall of Tendulkar’s wicket! We all started to sway to the music till we decided again to go for the experience of our next bout with the sea.

As you know, the beach was more or less of a half round shape with two small wavy hills encompassing the both ends. The terrain is just more than artistic to be described in words; the height of the tropical trees matched the hill shape which adds to the exuberant ambience of the location, nevertheless the entire shore line gets filled up with shacks during the season September to March. The shanty shacks are made out of bamboo columns and thatch roof & walls and has got a balcony & a bed room! The bed is made out of bamboo sticks and has invariably got a coconut tree by the side of the window cut out to give it an extraordinary natural ambience. Mostly, they are occupied by the foreign tourists and for an unbelievably low tariff of Rupees two hundred a night. The shops open with great splendour and offers services from anything to Kerala Ayurvedic Messages, Beauty parlour, Drum shop, Ornaments, traditional Goa’n Clothes, Cybercafés etc., etc., and above all restaurants for cuisines from all five continents for an amazingly low price. And most of all you get all the cocktails, wines and all sort of alcoholic beverages original as well as local reproduction available under the sun.

Aditya, an incalculably adventurous guy started looking elsewhere now and said 'guys, anybody coming with me?' And then jumped out of the table and headed quietly for the sea. While the rest of the crowd was hesitating for a moment, I volunteered to accompany him. He guided me near a motor boat – the guy presumably a fisherman was shouting ‘Dolphin ride’, ‘Dolphin ride’ – I don’t know what transpired amongst them, Aditya asked me to follow him. Both of us sat down on the fibre boat, mounted life jackets on us and the boat started. The fisherman shouted ‘Ladies & Gentleman, please look all around yourselves while we go deep into the sea, it’s your luck, you might as well see some dolphins today!’ I thought wow and Aditya said ‘ Ha Ha Kemon dilam'; for a few minutes it was OK, but then gradually the waves stared to become bigger & bigger and the boat had to negotiate steeper to get over the each wave. The ride became bumpier by every second. At one point we thought gone case ‘this is the last day of our life’. I started to pray to the Almighty clamping on to the boat railings as firmly as I can. At that very moment the boat jumped a few metres trying to steer past a huge wave and we all bounced on to the boat deck with a bang!!! It all looked darkness for a few seconds & then regained consciousness to see I am right there in the middle of sea and in the same boat yet again!

Everyone started shouting at the top of their voice and sought for return of the boat to the shore right away.

- ‘We do not want to see any Dolphin, please forget about it! Take us back, take us back’.

The fisherman said, “Oh! Ho! don’t you all unnecessarily worry; we do this ‘day in & day out’ and face the same request every day”. Caroline suggested, ‘take us back through an alternate route we do not want to face waves anymore’!!!

We all returned back with eyes closed for most of the time, murmuring as many God names as we can through the normal route!!, empty handed though and sighed a relief!!, Oh! God you only could have saved us our day but then started to relish the excitement which was nothing short of remaining in oblivion about the rest of the World for a while.

Nevertheless, we all got nothing less than well captivated by the magnificent scenery, as we all got soaked in the beauty and grandeur of the seaside and returned with the grand memoirs of the lingering taste of the dishes that we tried.